


shining until dawn

by highrollers



Series: skylights are bright sometimes [2]
Category: Blaze and the Monster Machines
Genre: Axle City, Gen, Orange Island, TW: Blood, blaze learns to deal with life without kids tm, continues from stars above us, crushie b crushie, dragon island, kids be teens and learning to thrive, more ppl for once, multiple worlds involved, pickle maybe alive??, several years in the future, tw: PTSD, tw: death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:20:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24418009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highrollers/pseuds/highrollers
Summary: sometimes you'll lose someone.sometimes years would pass in which you keep forgetting you lost them, and that pain hurts anew.sometimes, for the sake of everyone, you'll pretend it doesn'tsometimes it still does.but sometimes, you'll traverse through lands you've never dreamed of to find the one's you lost (yourself most of all) and give them the cure they need.for whatever they knew and whatever they don't, they will continue through, far past the end.there are no endings, only new beginnings.this is their story...[in other words, the start of a broad future in which AJ is a leader, I have no idea what's with Pickle anymore, Crusher is somewhat confused about everything and is growing into new powers he never asked for and Blaze is just at the end of his rope. and everyone has trauma from before. oh and a big adventure back to the 'Grey Lands' with the place they're going to suffers through peculiar predicaments.]
Series: skylights are bright sometimes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1757830
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	1. '''< Prologue >|< Prologue >'''

If I had to say one thing, it'd most definitely be a question.

What the question is? I'm not quite sure yet.

It's just, so many things are in my head and I'm so confused and yet -- is it too much of a stretch to hope that everything would go back to normal? Is that too selfish? Is there a normal?

I don't know what to think anymore.

Maybe about the fact that I let the two of them run right into some metal circle at the bottom of a cliff without even trying. Or feeling.

Maybe that I just left one of the trucks (people?) who came with me into the very island to bring down an entire building. Even though it was my responsibility.  _ They were my responsibility. _

Somehow I'm rubbish at that. The first in a long while.

And to add to that, now everyone else is stuck in their own problems of my own making. Crusher is now alone, quiet, almost subdued. When he musters up the energy to even turn up to a race, he rarely cheats. And somehow, even when he actually wins, he looks like he couldn't care less about it. A shadow of his former self.

Darington is more scared now, more clingy to the rest of us, and stays up at night way too long for his own good.

Stripes, well, he hides it well. He'd seen the same things Darington has, so he holds his trust the most. So he tries to stay strong, for his sakes. But he's also suffering, I know it just by his standoffishness he now adopts.

Watts could barely hold a straight face when he had heard of the news. I could tell that she blamed herself for the loss of her partner, and it's tearing at her terribly. She volunteers to most things now (especially the Garage), and doesn't go anywhere near the beach. Doesn't leave the city at all.

And Starla has retreated back to her farm and Zeg to the dinosaur-occupied part of the forest, too ashamed to look at our haunted faces.

But somethings never change. The races go on, some problems come and go (small comparing to what happened to us) and day and night passes.

The holes slowly closes, the others start to come back again, although some things never change and some don't close at all. We're still damaged, still hurting, and somehow it's all my fault.

Or maybe it isn't. That's another question.

If you gave the the ability to ask any question and get the answer, I would probably turn you down. Some answers aren't worth knowing. And I finally get why everyone ignores it when we get sidetracked out of a race, or when he (we) cheat.

Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

That's my answer.


	2. Looking Back <> Once Again

When Blaze found himself in a cave a long way from the race for the fifth time that week, he decided to stay in it.

He was sick and tired of having to go back again every single time only to feel the absence hit him again like a sledgehammer, dulled but still sharp, a contradiction in the making. It was a silence that made you deaf, a blank slate that turned you blind. It was the stuff of nothingness that was twisting in his insides, an acute pain that he knew could not be raced away.

So he stayed until the race finished, and a good long while after it.

And when he came back to the city, the empty seat feeling like a dead weight (why did he feel like this? It's been a good couple of years they were gone now, two lost and one most certainly dead, and the rest suffering from the pain), no one gave him any notice. Like usual, like _before_ , and maybe even _after_ , they kept on going, as if nothing has happened. Well, it certainly had happened, and the amount of ignorance was enough to make one insane.

But Blaze didn't question it. He knew how much the truth hurts; he knew by the spaces in between the talks he has with his friends and the shadows that passed through their faces any time they got close to the touchy subject. 

Sometimes being together, under the same roof, had that effect.

So Blaze came back when the afternoon overlooked the sun setting, and when he went to his home (no detour to the Monster Dome this time, no more, it had too many memories and his pit stop most of all-) he straightaway drove to his bed and cried into it (feeling stifled but that’s what he deserved isn’t it? He didn’t hear their cries and so he won’t hear his own [an eye for an eye] a soul for a soul-) for the nth time that week.

He was lost. And he knew it.

That didn’t change a single thing though and so he continued his sobbing, a lonely sound that echoed through the city. Through the worlds (the lost soul cried, and no one heard).

Because it was a sort of strange and twisted bliss, to not feel the pain of others, and so they went on with their lives, oblivious (most of them, anyways) to the wracking sobs.

The one they called hero cried and his cry was the most loneliest sound.

He was getting taller.

It wasn’t like he was actively measuring, not with his visor abandoned in the middle of who-knows-where and all the necessary tools were, like, available to him at that moment anyways. But, from the widening eyes of Ga-Neverbloom (one of the words for short), he could tell there was a slight difference in his height.

His name was Kit. And her name was Never.

He kept forgetting, even with the months and years past which means that by now he should be used to it but somehow even through the distance it still tears at him, some invisible something that claws at his throat in his sleep and forces him to endure the silence that comes with trauma and the space between people you thought you know and the person they really are and the quiet stillness that comes with change and all the things that comes in the territory of having no choice but making one anyways and paying the price (the longest breath that ran out was his only comfort of trying to find words to explain his feelings; it felt less like facing it and more like running and he knew running was the thing he did best).

So he paid the price and held the fake name as if it was real and watched over her, as much as he can.

These days, the stuff he can do ‘as much as he can’ was getting smaller by the second.

He shook his head and huffed a snarl back, gloved hands in pockets. _It wasn’t_ his _fault for all this_ , he tried to reason to himself, he _wasn’t the one to get them in this trouble_. But memories of the boatride and him slipping away except with another hand slipping into the deep with him still haunted his dreams, along with other things that he cannot forget. 

He couldn’t forget. And maybe that was the reason he couldn’t sleep every other night, memories of dreams or dreams of memories or some sick twisted nightmare visiting him underneath his eyelids and causing the bags under his eyes as some type of retribution-

“Hey there Kit. Slow down your burners for a second, aye?”

He slowed his pacing, looking at the intruder. With his body mostly confined to a wheelchair, he managed to dredge up a name to match the face.

“Aiden, right?” His voice was low, gruff with disuse. He didn’t need to talk much anymore, especially with the only person that truly knew him being mute and avoiding him at all costs, going so far as to run away from him before he could catch a glimpse of her. It would hurt at him terribly if it wasn’t for the fact he was already used to the pain.

The boy named Aiden smiled and shook his ginger hair out of his face before wheeling in closer. Kit couldn’t help but take a step back. The other teen stopped, his rare smile dimming significantly. “So, how are you? Silver has been taking reports and found out you’re not doing much apart from the work set out for you. Are you okay?”

“You just said I did the work, so there’s no reason you need to look for me or that,” he nearly said _stop looking out for me_ but he felt a sharp burning in his chest and steered away from the phrase as much as he could. “That was the deal, wasn’t it? I do work, and I get food and shelter. We both did as the deal commanded, and we got our fair share, and that’s it. There’s nothing between us apart from this, so stop trying to get so close to me! To us…”

Aiden gave him a dubious look. “Look mate, I don’t know what you two guys have went through, and I’m not usually a stickybeak-”

“Then stop being one!”

He gave a lengthy sigh that made Kit want to dig his heels even deeper into the floorboards. “ _But_ , you are so-so _bleak_ and _empty_ just like she is and I can’t tell if it is because what happened to you or what you did to something else.” He looked up, surprised (actually showing an emotion other than neverending sadness that you fell down neverending levels or the heights of anger that burned into sadness or the end of the pit where you just threw yourself to anger) and Aiden continued his speech either unknowing of the impact or knowing just enough. “And I don’t wanna push you over the edge, but you need to let it out. You need to stop punishing yourself by eating so little, by watching her at all hours, by doing so much and getting so little back in return. You need to return (to us, to her, he thought but never said)… you need to live.”

He felt oh so weak, and could barely muster up the energy to reply with a too soft statement-turned-question. Aiden looked at him sharply (somehow he crossed the distance between them and he was backed up to the wall and couldn’t escape) as he placed an unblemished palm underneath his jaw. “Existing is never enough. And hurting yourself is never the answer.”

In that moment, he could’ve sworn time went both faster and slower, and somehow his heart slowed down with it. _Maybe_ , he thought to himself, _but that isn’t enough_.

 _Maybe_ , he replied back equally soft, _you’ll find what is enough_.

And so, that was the first time someone’s attempt to snap him out of it worked and hope blossomed in his aching chest in a long time.


	3. Heartache <> Hearthurt

Night fell shortly afterwards in both realms, and so their days bleed on to the next.

These days, looking at the night sky was one of his greatest comforts.

It’s pathetic, he already knew. At least, it should be to his younger self. If you asked him a few years ago about it, he would’ve laughed or frowned or smirked and drove away from you, content to be stewing in complications of whether he should actually straight up attempt to kill his opponents once and for all (it was a joke but even then it still bothered him so it always remained a no and so he went, oblivious). But that was a few years ago and so he was stuck in front of Blaze’s house listening to him sporadically start sobbing in his sleep then cut off like a broken record. It’s a kind of funny, ironic even, to see him broken finally after years of trying to put on a brave face and ignoring the pain. 

Kind of.

Now it’s just downright sad and Crusher knew he couldn’t do a thing about it except watch over him and hope for the one day he would actually look up at him and listen for once.

_ ‘Stop being a ghost’ _

_ ‘You don’t deserve this and you know it’ _

_ ‘Stars above just  _ listen  _ for fucking once’ _

But of course he knows that saying that isn’t going to help him and so he keeps his forked tongue between his lying teeth and stays silent.

_ ‘You were enough, once’ _

Please don’t give up.

And she was fighting nightmares in her sleep, feeling a dull ache everywhere as she felt the glass cut into her hand (it fell slowly, winking in a thousand reflections of shattered mirrors), the woman looking at her with a slow smile befitting a cat who just caught their mouse, the dappled rays of dawn flickering between dust motes as her view alternated between light and contrasted outlines.

This is not real.

She tried to move her hands (anywhere anywhere let me out let me ou-) but her hand just gripped onto that shard of the orbuculum and pushed the women down.

Pushed it down.

Deeper still.

(she was screaming, she knew, and the static noises in her mind quietened enough for her to her someone holding her down whispering sweet nothings that she couldn’t heed much since she was screaming it out screaming every bit of it out until her voice splintered just like the glass in her hand)

Something trickled on to her hand or maybe it was from her hand that it trickled from. The woman was breathing heavily, stifled by the panicking girl who on some debauched instinct pressed her down even harder (pressed it down even harder) shuddering with wracking tears as she did so. And somehow she could feel the phantom breath of her as she whispered while holding her hand which was riddled with pieces of smoky red looking glass, “I knew you can do it.”

And then she woke up thrashing in her soaked sheets and she hit the face in front of her in her wild panic and it was-

Liam. Again. For the hundredth time since the week started and many times as much before, he caught her out in the middle of her nightmares. She shook it off with a detachedness (which was ironic since she still had tears running down and her throat felt raw) she now adopts, had adopted, since-

No. Just no. 

She got up and reached over to get the plastic bottle near her bedstand, ignoring her twin’s worried look. He ruffled his shock blue hair in anticipation of the one-sided talk.

She didn’t know why he bothered, but bothered he did.

“Are you okay?” A question that, in any other circumstances, would’ve been hilarious. He starts off like this every night, as if the vivid nightmares lessened or she would miraculously talk.

They didn’t and so she didn’t, as they go.

He looked so utterly lost, so helpless looking at her staring off to the wall clutching at her plastic bottle with strength. He noticed her far-away expression and looked to her hands, which had water dripping from the tip.

He didn’t have much to go by, even after all these years, but he knew that water set her off just as easily.

[it hurts so much i feel the glass digging in it sinks so deep my arm hurts it cuts but takes ages to it was an eternity and a second and those unblinking eyes i wish i was dead i wish it was gone what is this happiness what is this joy what is life wha is-]

He didn’t have much to go by, considering the years, but the most he could do looking at her frozen face as she battles with the urge to scream or shout or rip or do something that would hurt herself or anyone else was by reluctantly grabbing the pouch by his side and blowing some of the dust into her face, her eyes especially, and watched her fall into a deep, dreamless sleep right onto her bed. He merely got the blanket and put it on top of her, barely holding back tears of his own.

These days, he needed a greater amount of Sand to get her into such a peaceful state, and Silv always said it wouldn’t last long, not with someone like her (she might get addicted to it, was something else she added, but Liam shook it off because that wasn’t the most of her problems and anyways she was stronger than that and it wasn’t like she knew Sand) but for her sakes and his, he would keep giving it to her until she got better.

He’d make sure of it.

After all, it was the only way he could help, after all this time.

That night, when the crying was longer than usual, Crusher went in and slept next to Blaze, laying his head near his just like how Pickle would do to him once.

He fell asleep shortly afterwards to the sound of quiet.

Maybe he could do something right.

That night, Liam slept by the side of her bed, falling asleep in one of the worst angles he could have possibly slept in.

Maybe he could do something right, he hoped.

Maybe he could do something right.


End file.
